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Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Initiative! The Plan.

Well, the other day I posted a bit of a tease about how this new game system I'm thinking about is going to work. I wanted to lay out some basics, just so you understand where I'm coming from and what I'm trying to achieve with this.

Design decisions only make sense in light of specific constraints or objectives.

Initiative! is meant to be a simple, freewheeling game of teams overcoming evil.

Simple means:

No long lists of things to remember

No complex decisions before you have the information you need

One roll tells you all you need to know

Negligible DM prep required

Freewheeling implies interesting options at the table, the ability to create new stuff in the story and to combine things in unexpected ways.

It's about teams, because not many games do the team concept really well, and it's something I think deserves more game design impact at the table. I'll get more into how I see that working down the road, but it's a part of the system I'm really excited about.

For right now I don't have a story concept more complex than "overcoming evil." You could use it just as well for overcoming good, I suppose. But while Initiative! is a generic system, it still assumes a story that is about a group or a team that work against opposing forces in order to accomplish their goals.

I'll be posting more detailed outlines of how the system works over the next couple of weeks. Any feedback will be very welcome!